Europe’s highest court strikes down Safe Harbor data sharing between EU, US by Sebastian Anthony.
From the post:
Europe’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), has struck down the 15-year-old Safe Harbour agreement that allowed the free flow of information between the US and EU. The most significant repercussion of this ruling is that American companies, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, may not be allowed to send user data from Europe back to the US.
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The full text of the decision: decision (link to the full text).
A repeated theme in discussion of this decision is the need for stronger promises by the U.S. to protect European privacy rights.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t follow some segments of the news very closely but surely most people have heard of Edward Snowden. Yes?
I won’t recite the history of his disclosures here but suffice it to say that his revelations establish beyond any doubt that the United States government has systematically disobeyed it own laws and the laws of other countries in surveillance and other areas. If that weren’t bad enough, the U.S. government has repeated lied to the people it governs and other countries.
Let’s assume that the United States government agrees to very strong provisions for guarding the privacy of EU citizens. On what basis would you trust such a promise? A government willing to break it own laws, to lie to its own people, certainly will have no qualms lying to other countries.
In litigation that challenges any future agreement on the transfer of user data from Europe to the United States, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) should take judicial notice that the United States is in fact a habitual liar and its word counts for nothing in its proceedings.
I don’t know how long it will take the United States to regain credibility in international courts but it has fully and well earned the designation “habitual liar” in present proceedings.